Ten Favorite Novels About Actual Historical Figures
(alphabetically by historical figure, and excluding writers, who have a list of their own)
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus: Augustus by John Williams
Tycho Brahe: Sublunar by Harald Voetmann
Richard Francis Burton: To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer
Judy Garland: Was by Geoff Ryman
Adolf Hitler: The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad
Ned Kelly: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Robert Oppenheimer*: Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet
Captain Robert Scott: The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
Alan Turing: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
* and Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard
— June 27, 2024